


Outside In

by baruffio



Category: Inside Out (2015), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6509866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baruffio/pseuds/baruffio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint, Natasha, Anthony, Bruce, and Steve run operations in Nick Fury's headquarters. After Nick resolves never to be sad again, the entirity of Nick's mind is allied against Steve.</p>
<p>Headquarters is nowhere near ready to handle the ramifications.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Headquarters Infiltrated

The first attack comes when Nick is six. They all scream as they cling to the control panel and giant, winged marsupials plaster all over the windows. Bruce's eyes glow green in the darkness of the room, and then Anthony's shouting and Steve's crying one manful tear at a time and Natasha announces that they simply cannot let this happen again. 

It doesn't. At least, not without their being prepared. Natasha convinces the mind workers to send scrap materials to headquarters. Bruce and Anthony construct a lab next to the mind manuals, and while Bruce frantically reads up on the details of how Nick's mind runs, Anthony hammers and smelts and solders defense mechanisms from Natasha's stash. In the first couple of weeks, he creates a stockpile of grenades, missiles, and long-range tasers. In the first couple of years, he builds a force field that arcs over all of headquarters and down into the depth of the Abyss of Lost Memories. They began activating it nightly because attacks slowly but surely grow in frequency. 

Anthony assembles them near the lab one night as Nick is brushing his teeth. He looks critically over each of them, as if trying to assess if they are worthy of his creations, but melts when he sees Bruce anxiously bouncing on his feet.

"You really shouldn't be in a fight," Anthony informs Bruce. Bruce sighs in relief. "For Clint, a bow and arrows." 

Clint squeals as he grabs the gifts. He gleefully strokes the golden orb arrowheads. "Are those--"

"Empathy pearls," Bruce says, pointing to a mind manual high up on the shelf. "Connection over another's happy memory. The mind workers sent up an entire ball pit of these, and they were the only thing we could find to balance out the arrowhead. Watch out, it's sharp."

"What about me?" Natasha demands.

"God, Natasha, don't get your panties in a bunch," Anthony huffs.

"You shouldn't say that," Steve says miserably. 

"So?" Natasha says impatiently. "Out with it!"

Anthony brandishes a set of blasters, points them at Natasha, and shouts "Pew-pew!" Natasha flips off of Clint, lands behind Anthony, and snags the blasters in less than a second. She looks over them approvingly.

"I remember those," Steve says. "Those blasters are from the alien invaders game down at the arcade. It closed down last year."

"Not exactly those blasters, though," Bruce says. "These blasters are considerably more dangerous."

Natasha cocks her head.

"That's right, _Steve_ ," Anthony says belittlingly. "These are fitted with electromagnets that, when adjusted by the blaster controls, can drag the target into the abyss, bind, or even knock unconscious for up to one week."

"Cool," Natasha says.

"Not cool, not cool!" Bruce corrects. "The electromagnets are powered by fear empathy, meaning that the more scared the target is, the stronger the electromagnets are, meaning that there's a potential endless cycle of fear growth that could result in inconceivable consequences." 

"Shut up, Bruce," Anthony says.

"Fear empathy?" Natasha repeats. "Ew, no thanks."

"You're not feeling fear." Anthony begins to turn red in exasperation. "It's the perfect invention for you! You can cause others to fear."

"Am I causing fear?" Clint asks. He looks uncertainly at his bow and arrows.

"The entire point of weapons is to cause fear!" Anthony bellows. "Which is why everyone except Bruce is getting a weapon!"

"I get a weapon?" Steve asks. He looks up at Anthony with big, hopeful blue eyes, and Anthony sneers right back.

"Of course," Anthony says. He digs through the scraps and pulls out a red and white striped shield the size of Steve's body. 

"Thank you," Steve says carefully. He moves to hold the shield and falls under its weight.

"It doubles as a cradle," Anthony says, "that you can use to cry yourself to sleep in. You big baby."

The little part of Steve's face visible from underneath the shield moves into that pinched expression that Steve gets when he's sad.

"I don't like bullies." His muffled voice echoes around the shield.

"I don't like crybabies."

Bruce grabs at his face in distress.

"Oh, look; Nick finally fell asleep!" Clint yells. He flips the shield off of Steve with a toe before he runs over to beckon at the black screen. "Anthony, let's see how our forcefield is running; Steve, you're on dream duty for tonight, would you like a cup of coffee or anything to keep you running?"

"The force field is perfect," Anthony says. "It always has and always will be. I made it, so you should know that it's perfect."

"Never hurts to check, though," Bruce says. "Just a simple precaution, really."

Anthony deflates, smiles at Bruce, and patters over to run diagnostics on the force field.

"I wish I could do that," Steve says.

"You're great as you are." Clint throws an arm around Steve's frail shoulders. "You feeling awake, alert, perky--"

"I've got a pulse," Steve says. "Do you mind bringing the shield over here?" He shuffles his feet. "I can't carry it yet."

"Say no more, my man." Clint cartwheels over to the shield. He's expecting it to be heavy from how it bowled over Steve and yanks much harder than necessary to pick it up. 

"Eventually, I'll be able to pick it up," Steve says mournfully. 

"That's the spirit." Clint pats Steve on the back. "Atta boy, Steve!"

"Maybe when I can pick up the shield, Anthony won't hate me." Steve runs a finger around the edge of a stripe on the shield.

"Oh, come on; Anthony doesn't hate you!" Clint says.

"He does. You've seen how he talks to everybody else, and how he talks to me."

"He just doesn't get you all the time, you know? And he loves loves loves getting angry at you--"

"Me moreso than anyone else," Steve agrees.

"Which," Clint continues, completely undeterred, "is clearly a sign that you are actually one of his favorites. He loves getting mad; that's his thing!"

"I don't love being sad," Steve says. "I think I'd rather be nothing." He throws a look out the window to the abyss outside of headquarters.

"Hey now, that's no way to be feeling," Clint says.

"But it's how I feel," Steve says blankly.

"Right," Clint says. "Well, how about you get to practicing lifting your shield? Anthony included you in that, didn't he?"

"He did." Steve heaves at the shield, and it budges a couple of inches. "Thank you for carrying it over," Steve says.

"Any time!" Clint says genteelly. "See you in the morning, Steve!"

He thinks about grabbing a nice, happy memory to play for Steve through the night, but decides against it. Steve doesn't get happy when he sees happy memories.


	2. A House Divided

Bruce is the first to wake, and he wakes up screaming. Anthony wakes a few seconds later to see Clint and Natasha barreling out of the bunkroom, weapons on hand.

Large, feathery, flying snakes are wreaking chaos in HQ. Steve is frantically attempting to pull the shield away from the manual employ for the force field so that he can press the button to engage while monsters knock memory transport pipes loose, shred through the leather couch, break windows, and dig through the floors.

Natasha, nose wrinkled in disgust, jumps on the back of one of the creatures and swings around its body while blasting maniacally. Clint hooks a leg around a broken pipe and, while upside down, shoots at the creatures nearest the core memories. The arrows go straight through the creatures and, when the gold orb touches the monster, the creature dissipates into thin air. 

There's a sudden whooshing noise and Anthony hovers out from the bunk room in a shiny red and gold armor suit. His face red with rage, he raises a hand and blasts away creatures right and left. Bruce, as he runs around frantically flailing and shrieking, knocks the shield from the controls and Steve pummels the button.

The forcefield snaps into place like a giant elastic, and the remaining monsters are defeated in a matter of minutes. With Natasha's last reverberating blaster shots, a silence punctuated with heavy breathing seeps through headquarters.

"Whoo hoo!" Clint says. "Great job with the weapons, Anthony! They worked great!"

Natasha slides her blasters into the holsters. "Not bad at all, Anthony."

Bruce keeps hyperventilating, and Anthony looks up from rubbing circles on Bruce's back to find Steve. 

Steve is curled around the manual operator for the forcefield, protecting the button with his body and not relaxing in the slightest even now that the battle is over.

"Steve!" Anthony bellows, and Steve looks up from the button and flinches. Sparks shoot from Anthony and Bruce hurriedly stamps them out before they have chance to catch fire. "What the hell happened? Can't you do anything right? You had one job, just the one, and you are so BLINDINGLY INCOMPETENT that you had to let us all down!"

Anthony is shaking with rage. Smoke streams from his suit. Clint and Bruce exchange nervous looks. 

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Steve whispers in a tiny voice. He's fighting back tears as he slides down to hunch miserably on the floor.

"Oh, good. That makes everything better!" Anthony roars. 

"We're fine," Clint says. "Everything's fine, Anthony."

"No thanks to him!" Anthony points an unkind finger at Steve. 

"What did happen?" Natasha asks. "How did they get in? They've never made it through the glass before."

"I was practicing with the shield," Steve says. "I can't pick it up normally, but I can swing it up, and then I lost control of it and it cracked the window. I swung it out immediately, and it landed over the force field engage button. And then they attacked."

"Oh, so that's how you ruined everything?" Anthony snorts. "You do more mistakes on accident that the rest of us could do on purpose. You're a liability to all of us, and a liability to Nick."

"No! Nonono!" Steve scrambles to his feet and reaches for the control panel. The screen overhead remains dark.

"Anthony," Bruce says, but Anthony is just reaching his second wind and unstoppable.

"I don't know why you even exist. All you do is get in the way of us and make Nick miserable. You only bring hurt. You're worse than useless. My force field was foolproof, but I guess I didn't account for A FOOL LIKE YOU."

"Anthony!" Bruce says, sharper this time.

"WHAT?" Anthony bellows. He grabs the shield and flings it out the broken window. "THAT SHIELD WAS WASTED ON YOU!"

The shield bounces off a pipe, which immediately shatters, and boomerangs back into the central part of the room. Steve leaps up to catch it and holds onto the grip as hard as he can, but the shield is still moving too fast for him. 

With Steve still attached, it ricochets off a wall, another pipe, and shoots straight through one of the few unbroken windows. 

"Oh my God," Natasha says numbly, and she sprints to the broken window. "STEVE!"

Down in the shadows of the abyss, she can just make out little red boots spinning beneath a flying shield. Then that too is gone, and all that is left is the echoing remnants of her scream in the mists. 

-*-

Later, Nicholas won't remember how old he was at the time.

Daddy was home and Nicholas was going to show him how good he was at ball now, but he accidentally threw the ball over the fence and then it was bobbing down the Hudson.

Jack Fury shook him and firmly told Nicholas to stop crying. He wasn't going to have no wussy of a son.

Nicholas won't remember that he was six years old at the time. He'll remember calloused hands pressing bruises into his forearms, the warm, heavy smell of tobacco radiating from worn clothes, and hating that he was crying. He was never going to be sad again.


	3. The First of Many

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A whole lot of plot.

Steve lies curled up under the shield for hours before he figures out how to wedge dull memory orbs in order to squeeze his way out. He's exhausted by the fall and the overwhelming despair of the place. He could stay here forever. He wouldn't hurt anyone. He wouldn't hurt Nick.

Steve has no idea if Nick is awake or asleep. It's an entire other world down here, dimly illuminated by the carpet of fading orbs and with no sign of Nick's personality overhead. He turns his shield upside down so that it is easier to drag over the orbs and trundles towards the wall up ahead.

He finds out that the wall up ahead is actually a large pile of orbs.

Steve takes a deep breath, swallows, and walks on.

He curls up on his shield whenever he is overcome by exhaustion, but marches on when he can. He feels that he has marched for an eternity when he catches sight of something ahead.

"Hello?" Steve calls, and the figure leaps to his feet and dances towards him. The fellow is huge, missing an arm, and beaming.

"You crazy son of a gun!" the man says. "A rescue mission! I don't believe it."

"A rescue mission?" Steve repeats. "What happened to your arm?"

"The Abyss of Lost Memories happened to my arm." The man considers Steve. "You're not in my unit. Who are you? You're not with the Howling Commandos, are you? I'm too young to be losing memory!"

"Oh, no," Steve says. "I've never even met them. I've heard about them from Nick's games, though! They fight with Nick when he's fighting those Axis Powers."

"That's as much as Captain Nicholas knows," the man says. "You probably get this all the time, but do you know who you look like?"

"No, I don't," Steve says uncertainly.

"You look like Steve. You know, the one from HQ? The resemblance is uncanny. Anyway, I'm James Barnes."

"Bucky!" Steve exclaims. "You're the leader of the Howling Commandos."

"Was, that is," Bucky says. He waves the shoulder on his stump arm. "At this rate, I'll be gone by tomorrow morning. How long have you been in here, stranger?"

"Right, about that," Steve says. He offers a hand, and then switches to offer his other hand when he realized that he was holding his hand out to the stump side. "My name is Steve."

Bucky's mouth falls agape. "You don't mean to say...from HQ?"

"I fell out the window," Steve affirms. "There was an attack on headquarters last night."

"Sorry about that," Bucky says. "The Howling Commandos are sworn to keep HQ safe. But when the train of thought is stopped, it makes it very difficult to reach HQ. So how are you getting back?"

"I don't think I'm going back." Steve looks at his hands.

"What? They need you up there! Captain Nicholas needs you up there! I've never heard of lead emotions even leaving HQ, let alone abandoning it!"

"I accidentally let the monsters in," Steve says. Bucky roars with laughter. "What? Why are you laughing?"

"It's funny," Bucky says. "I mean, it's sad, and you're sad, so it's funny."

"I don't see anything funny about it," Steve says stiffly.

"You wouldn't," Bucky giggles. "Come on, Steve; let's get back to the bluffs." He pushes Steve into the shield and begins dragging the shield across the orbs.

"Will I fade away?" Steve asks. He runs his hands over the orbs as Bucky drags him.

"I don't know," Bucky shrugs. The movement almost tosses Steve from the shield.

"Is there any way to get your arm back?"

"I don't know."

"Are the Howling Commandos sending a rescue crew?"

"Only if they're absolutely crazy," Bucky says. "Which they are, but they may not be that kind of crazy. What about your people? Are they going to send you a rescue crew from HQ? I've heard stories about Anthony's inventions. I'd love to see one in action."

"Definitely not," Steve says. "They didn't want me to stay in headquarters. I bet they're relieved that I'm gone."

"Hey," Bucky says. "They can be happy and sleepy and grumpy and dopey or whatever else they like to be, but that doesn't make them that mean, right? You guys are still a family."

"I don't know that," Steve says. "Bruce and Anthony are like family. Whenever Bruce gets really anxious, Anthony gets really mad. And Natasha and Clint are like family. They were the first ones. I'm the last one, the odd one. The wrong one."

Steve, in the midst of his moping, realizes as Bucky takes a step that Bucky's shoes have vanished. Steve flops over the edge of the shield, waddles forward, pushes at Bucky until he relents to fall back onto the shield, and grabs the handle.

"What are you doing?" Bucky demands as Steve starts pulling the shield.

"I want to see if you last longer when you're away from the orbs," Steve says. "If it makes no difference, then you can go right back to pulling me."

"You can't even pull me," Bucky says.

"Maybe not as fast," Steve retorts. "But I can still move." He yanks as hard as he can on the handle and the shield slides forwards a few inches. He sticks his tongue out at Bucky and slides the shield a few more inches.

In ten minutes, they move a couple of feet and Bucky is laughing every time Steve even starts talking about how it is being sadness. Bucky is still chortling when a new voice rings through the mist.

"If it's not Bucky Barnes, gone completely mental. I wouldn't have thought it possible." Bucky leaps out of the shield and sprints across the orbs.

"Peggy, thank God, Peggy, show me your beautiful face!" 

"Hold your horses, Commander Barnes. That's enough of the insubordinate talk." 

Peering out into the gloom, Steve can just make out the outline of the approaching Peggy.

"Can she get us out?" Steve asks without much hope.

"Peggy can do anything," Bucky says, and Peggy steps close enough that Steve can make out her features.

Peggy, despite her funny accent, looks exactly like Mr. Fury's sister. She stands before them in high heels, wearing her dress like a uniform, and throwing a salute.

"Good to see you, Steve. Everyone upstairs has been in an uproar about your disappearance. Good work on locating him, Commander Barnes." 

"Are the rest of headquarters safe?" Bucky asks. 

"Perfectly so," Peggy says. "The rest of the team is currently excavating the breeding grounds of the monsters. They vanished as soon as Steve fell from the tower, oddly enough."

"I can't go back," Steve realizes. "I'd endanger everyone."

"That's not your place to worry about," Peggy says primly. "Besides, what on earth is Nicholas supposed to feel when sad things happen. He's losing part of being human when he is lacking you."

"Exactly what I'm saying," Bucky agrees.

"Now, if the concept is amenable to you two gentlemen, I propose we make our way to the exit." Peggy cocks her head. "So come along, boys."

Bucky winks at Steve, picks up the shield, and follows Peggy. Steve tries his best to keep up the pace and, in a matter of minutes, sees the dark shadow of the bluffs. Peggy looks from Bucky's stump to Steve's shield, loops her hanging rope through the shield grip, and bids them jump aboard.

Peggy pulls, drags, and hoists the slack as they climb closer and closer to the ledge. Bucky tries to help, but he is having a hard enough time staying on the swaying shield with one arm. Steve can't hold his arms above his head very long before he breaks into a coughing spell, and Peggy shoos him every time he attempts to assist her.

By the time they reach the ledge, Peggy's clothes are drenched through with sweat. She shakes it off and, entirely pristine and composed, helps Steve pull his shield over the edge.

Headquarters looks a lot smaller from the Long Term Memory side of the Abyss of Lost Memories. Steve wonders if anyone at headquarters can see him perched on the edge of the cliff. He wonders if they care.

"I suppose our next order of business is to try and get you back to HQ," Peggy says. "We could try the zipline, but we haven't perfected a way to stick the other end to HQ."

"I'm not going back," Steve says. He tries to look away from headquarters, but he's having a hard time turning from his home of ten years. 

"Why's that?" Peggy demands. "Are you scared, Steve?"

"Not Steve," Bucky says. "Steve is the bravest thing you've heard of."

"Then my question remains," Peggy says. "Why in all of God's green earth would you refuse to return to headquarters?"

"I'll go back if I'm needed," Steve says. "I was in everyone's way, and if I get in your way, then you can dump me right back into the abyss."

Peggy slaps him across the face. "If you are ever to consider speaking those words again, I will personally ensure that you take a trip through abstract thought. You're coming with me." She turns sharply on her heel and marches into archives of Long Term Memory.

Bucky gives Steve a smile and a one-armed shrug. "If I'm not much mistaken, you've just been recruited, Steve. Welcome to the Howling Commandos."

"Not so fast, Commander Barnes," Peggy calls from ahead. "First we'll have to put Steve through his paces. Your troop, however, will be pleased to see your return. If you make a stop at Playdough Plaza, they may even be able to suit you up with a new arm."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am!" Bucky salutes.

"I've never been through a pace before." Steve runs to keep up with Peggy. 

"For a start, you can help sort memory orbs. That will increase your strength and keep you familiar with the ongoings at HQ."

"I've never sorted memories before," Steve pants.

"It's fairly simple," Peggy says. "Thor will draw you a map that explains everything perfectly." She turns another corner in the labyrinth of memories and gestures to the barracks up ahead. "I'll leave you in his good hands until the Howling Commandos are next deployed. They'll need to find something new to do to keep useful now that HQ doesn't require constant guard and protection."

Steve drags his shield to the barracks and pauses outside the door. He draws himself up to his full height, dons his most somber expression, and raps on the door.

The door is instantly thrown open and he's suddenly facing a giant, gelatinous mind worker.

"Hello," Steve says. "I'm looking for Thor."

"You found him!" the mind worker roars. He towers over Steve, slaps him on the back, and opens the door wider. "Come on in, Steve!"

"You know me?" Steve struggles to haul his shield through the door.

"I know of you," Thor says. "I know of all the realms of Nicholas' mind."

"You must be a very great scholar," Steve says.

"Nay!" Thor laughs. "I am a warrior and a king."

"There seem to be an awful lot of warriors in Long Term Memory."

"My work is not in Long Term Memory," Thor corrects. "I can see why you would think that, but I am the first line of defense in Imagination Land."

"Defense from what?" 

Thor's gelatinous body ripples ominously. "The stuff of nightmares. I capture them from whichever realm they roam."

"Like the Howling Commandos?"

"The Howling Commandos protect HQ," Thor says. "I keep the villains in prison. We frequently interact in our travails."

"There must be some mistake." Steve trails Thor into a bunkroom with a giant chalkboard covered in schedules. "I was sent to learn about sorting memories."

"It's no mistake," Thor says grandly. "Everything is connected. Monsters don't come from nothing. They come from memories. They come from fears. My work starts with examining flagged memories, putting flagged memories on a watchlist, and ensuring that, should a monster be birthed from the memory, it is immediately apprehended." He raises a blobby arm and wipes a spot clear on the chalkboard. "I will show you the realms."

He draws a series of radiating lines that make absolutely no sense to Steve. Thor cocks his neckless head at the drawing, chalks in nine circles, and draws a dotted line through the center.

"There you have it," Thor says proudly. "Nicholas' mind."

"I have no idea what I'm looking at," Steve says.

"But could you duplicate it?" Thor asks.

Steve closes his eyes, trying to reconstruct the lines Thor had drawn. He opens his eyes to check. "Yes. Yes, I can."

"With that map, you have the general layout of the nine realms. Midgard is, of course--" Thor points at the center circle.

"Headquarters," Steve says. "Yeah, I'm starting to see it now, but I still have no clue about any of the rest of it. Or what it has to do with sorting."

"When Nicholas falls asleep, headquarters sends a new supply of memory orbs. It doesn't particularly matter where a memory goes. Memories do not travel linearly or temporally. They travel by association. The memories deliveries automatically sort based upon island of personality. Just find a memory with a matching link, and if there is anything dark in the memory, flag it." Thor drops his piece of chalk and glides away.

"Wait, what do you mean by matching link? What does that look like?"

"Whichever is the first active memory that bears some commonality with your memory is a matching link. It's not an exact science, Steve."

"Right." Steve, still feeling rather clueless, trails Thor down the hallway. "And flagging memories...how does that work?"

"You tell me," Thor says simply. "We have a feast at the end of every day. The Howling Commandos have dubbed me the Party King." He looks very pleased by the nickname. "If you have a memory to report, you do so at the feast. Any more questions?"

"Do you know," Steve starts, but he stutters to a stop.

"Probably," Thor says. "Go ahead and ask."

"Do they...miss me? In headquarters?"

"They notice your absence," Thor says. "You didn't do a lot on a daily basis, so there has been no noticeable change in Nicholas' personality. All islands are fully functional."

"Oh," Steve says sadly. "I guess I'll go start sorting memories, then?"

"It's either that or head back to headquarters," Thor says. "I should add that there are very good reasons for having five in headquarters. It does not benefit Nicholas for you to be amidst Long Term Memory."

"Thank you for saying that," Steve says. "That was a kind thing of you to say."

Steve toddles out of the barracks and digs into a freshly glowing pile of memory orbs from the night before. All the main memories have already been collected; there are only odds and ends here, like how Nick had to tie his left shoe twice in the morning because his hand slipped the first time or how the schoolbus driver scowled as he listened to the radio. Steve plops a few memories on his shield and begins dragging it down the archives, looking for an empty space to slot one in.

He eventually finds an open spot next to the time Nick stepped on chewing gum and another from when a neighbor pulled a knocked-over radio back through the window by the cord. 

Feeling dangerously close to satisfied, Steve turns back to collect more memories. He finds a blue memory underneath several red and a yellow. Steve pulls out the memory.

It's the last memory Steve helped make. Under the pulsing light, he sees Mrs. Fury, head bowed over her wedding picture, praying for Mr. Fury to make it home. Natasha had thought it best to give Mom room and prompted Nick to go get ready for bed, but here Steve could stare at Mom on end. 

She looks really sad.

Nick doesn't like it when Mom is sad. Steve wishes he could tell Mrs. Fury's Steve to get lost.

"Not to shine on your parade," Bucky says, and Steve spooks. He hobbles to his feet and spins to see the whole squad at Howling Commandos staring openly at him. "But," Bucky continues, "once I told the boys I met someone from HQ, they wanted to drop in. Steve, Howling Commandos. Howling Commandos, Steve from HQ."

Steve wipes tears away on the back of his hand. "Nice to meet you," he says carefully. 

Corporal Dugan lunges at him, wraps him in a bear hug, and swings Steve off his feet. "Honor's ours, Steve!"

Slightly unsettled, Steve looks over the rest of them. "Morita, Juniper, Falsworth...Sawyer, and Pufferton?"

"Pinky Pinkerton," Pinky correcs. "How do you know us?"

"Steve has a fantastic memory," Bucky brags. "He recognized me instantly."

"No one could forget your horrifying mug, sir," Juniper says, straight-faced. Bucky shoves him and reaches forward to tousle Steve's hair.

"Having fun sorting memories, then?"

"This is the last memory I helped make," Steve explains. The Howling Commandos turn instantly somber. Dugan takes off his hat.

"We'll get you back, sir," Morita assures him. "You'll make more."

Bucky jabs an elbow into Morita's ribs. "Remember what Peggy said," he grunts.

"Yessir," the Howling Commandos say in unison.

"Which bit that Peggy said?" Steve asks. "I might have missed it."

"We're not to pressure you in any way," Sawyer says. "It's not our duty.You're welcome here as long as you like."

"I do like," Steve says. "I miss headquarters and seeing every moment of Nick's life, but this is better. For both of us."

The Howling Commandos look supremely unconvinced. 

Steve picks back up the sad memory and looks up and down his current row of archives. "I'm going to get back to work. This is a job I can do."

"Yeah, Steve," Bucky says. He looks uncharacteristically grim. "You can do anything you put your mind to, buddy."

Dugan throws an arm around Bucky's shoulder. "We'll see you at the feast, won't we, Steve?"

Steve nods.

"We'll just, ah, leave you do it, then," Bucky says. He punches Steve's shoulder, which really hurts, and turns face to lead the Howling Commandos through the archives.

Steve looks for a memory for something in common with the Nick's last sad memory, but he doesn't find a match that satisfies him. He watches and rewatches some of his favorite memories when he stumbles across them; Nick screaming that it wasn't fair when he lost his toy, staring stony-faced at the teacher when she was reprimanding him, sobbing uncontrollably as Mrs. Fury pulls a metal splinter out of his foot...

The sky falls black and he can hear the Train of Thought screeching to a stop a few rows over in the archives. He tucks his unsorted memory back into the the empty bin and only just avoids getting out of the way of the next shipment of memories. Ruffled, he makes his way back towards the barracks. 

Steve reckons it's strange that he is so emotionally exhausted when he's not working as an emotion. Shield on arm, he re-enters the barracks.

There's no one there.

Steve belatedly realizes that he has no idea where the feast is set to be held. First day in Long Term Memory, and he's already isolating himself. He sighs and plunks down on a bed.

He hears it before he sees it. Slithering, hissing, and snarling, a lizard...serpent?..creature shoots out from under one bed and towards Steve. Steve automatically turns away, ducking behind his shield, and the creature's head slices off on the edge of the shield with a wet, meaty sound that makes Steve nauseated. Hopping to the floor, Steve examines the decapitated head. The scales turn pale and translucent; its violet tongue twitches against the floorboards. 

A prickling, uneasy sensation on the back of his neck causes Steve to look up and he finds himself face to face, or perhaps rather face to faces, with a two-headed lizard creature. He gives a surprised shout as he backs away, automatically raising his shield in defense.

"Steve?"

The lilting voice of Peggy echoes around the bunkroom a mere moment before she appears in the doorway, and Steve looks back just in time to see the coiled creature springing towards Peggy. 

"Run!" he shouts, and he throws the shield with all his might. It crashes into the creature mid-air, lopping off one of the heads in the process. The remaining head turns to glare at Steve, and then, as Steve is watching, two heads sprout from the stump of the freshly decapitated one. Spitting venomously, the creature scuttles towards Steve.

Steve looks around for something with which he can defend himself and reaches desperately for a pillow. Feet away, the creature coils into a striking pose--

BANG BANG BANG BANG. BANG.

Steve looks up to see Peggy training a gun on the creature. Five neat holes perforate the creature's spine and it lies, paralyzed, on the floor of the bunkroom.

"Thank you," Steve gasps. "Are you okay, Ms. Peggy?"

"Very much so." Peggy looks as unruffled as ever. She scoops up the severed head closest to her and offers Steve a small smile. "You're coming to the feast, then?"

"Yeah!" Steve says. "Of course. But what was that?"

Peggy holds up the head over her head. "Thor warned us that these might be coming. I believe these are known as hydra." She stomps on the edge of the shield and catches it when it flips into the air. "Not bad, Steve. Not bad at all."

Steve flushes and picks up the other hydra head lying on the bunkroom floor. "Where do we put these? If you tell me, I can take them there so you aren't late for the feast."

"Late for the feast," Peggy snorts. "The feast is exactly where we're taking these." She beams and looks unsettlingly like a giggling schoolgirl. "I'm not a woman for a wager, but two sad memories says Dugan will hurl."

"Dugan's fierce," Steve cautions. "I saw him when Nick was fighting the Axis Powers."

"Yeah, but he doesn't do snakes," Peggy cackles. She drops the head in her purse. "Nice to have new product to experiment with," she muses. "I wonder if we can weaponize the venom."

"Do you wager sad memories down here?" Steve asks belatedly.

"People wager rare things," Peggy says. "You were, by far, the most inactive in headquarters, so by extension, sad memories are fine commodities." She snaps her purse closed. "This way, Steve. Try not to fall behind."

Steve jogs after Peggy through the maze of Long Term Memory. He's panting for breath after a few steps and can only make out bits and pieces of what Peggy is saying up ahead. At one point it sounds as though she's expounding upon potential properties of hydra venom and then she's rambling on about truth and lies. Steve refocuses his attention on not falling behind and completely loses track of what Peggy's saying.

When they draw close to when they draw close to Deja Vu, Peggy marches over to a seemingly deserted building and kicks open the door. Volume blasts out of the building, and over the sounds of laughing, shouting, and singing mind workers booms Thor's voice.

"Welcome, Steve!" Thor says grandly from the high table. Steve pats down his hair and follows Peggy into the feast hall. 

"No dreams tonight," Peggy says in undertone, nodding at a table festooned with banners that read messages like 'Dream Team' and 'Get on Our Reverie Levelry.' "I must say I don't think the highest of their work ethic."

"Why aren't they making dreams?" Steve doesn't quite manage to conceal his alarm. 

"Nicholas doesn't have dreams every night," Peggy shrugs. "But he has been having fewer of late. His last dream was months ago."

"Is that normal? Is that how it's supposed to be?" Steve asks.

"I'm afraid I can only report levels of normalcy for Nicholas' brain," Peggy says. "You see, Steve, the manuals do say that dream patterns change as our human approaches adolescence, but it goes into no greater depth. Dream productions receives a notification every evening concerning whether or not there will be dreams."

"Why doesn't he have dreams?"

"Could be anything," Peggy says. "He could be clear-minded when he goes to sleep, absolutely exhausted, having had eaten a particular food or digested it in a particular way." She sends one more suspicious look to the dream productions table and makes her way to the main table, where Thor is attempting to fit an ice cream cone whole into his mouth. Casting a glance around the room, Steve spots the Howling Commandos at an adjacent table. He offers a quick wave in that direction and the table cheers. 

"Thor, we have a report to make," Peggy says. The noise of feast cuts off as suddenly as a lightswitch. Steve blushes under the weight of hundreds of eyes.

"Go ahead," Thor says solemnly.

Peggy slides a hand into her purse. "Hydra is here," she announces, and she thrusts the severed head into the air.

There are assorted gasps and alarmed shouts. 

"At least we had that one day off duty," Juniper says.

Dugan passes out.

"They all know what hydra is." Steve urgently turns to Peggy. "What's going on here?"

"Ask your Howling Commando friends," Peggy says. "Thor and I must talk business."

"I will lead an invading party!" Thor proclaims. Peggy yanks sharply on his gelatinous arm.

"Simply out of the question," she says firmly. "The Howling Commandos will handle the situation as they have handled every other situation."

Thor snorts with laughter and nods his head at Steve. "Not every other."

"You know the alignment perfectly well," Peggy snaps. "Steve, join the Howling Commandos at once."

"Yes, ma'am," Steve says automatically. He tugs his shield over to the Howling Commandos' table and plonks down next to Bucky.

"Dugan knew this day was always a possibility," Morita says. "He'll train through it."

"For Captain Nicholas!" Sawyer says. The Howling Commandos clink their bottles together. 

"What's hydra?" Steve asks without prelude. Bucky throws a playdough arm around Steve.

"Cut off one head, and two shall take its place," he says. "Hydra."

"Where did it come from? Why is it attacking? Why now? What does it want?"

"Slow down there, sir," Morita says. "There's a lot of things that we still don't know about hydra. This is our first time even seeing one."

"Which begs the question--" Bucky leans onto Steve-- "Where's the rest of the one Miss Peggy's holding, how many heads does it have now, and who was fighting it in the first place?"

"It attacked me in the bunkroom," Steve says. "I took off two heads. On accident."

"It's okay," Sawyer says. "You didn't know about the growing more heads bit."

"No, like on actual accident," Steve says. "This shield saved my life."

"A natural fighter!" Bucky crows. Dugan rouses at the noise, and Steve blushes and looks at the ground. He knows Bucky is saying that to be nice; he knows that he's weak, an accident magnet, and prone to waterworks...not quite prime warrior material. 

"Where's it now?" Dugan asks queasily. He has a white-knuckled grip on his bottle and keeps throwing shifty-eyed glances around the hall.

"Peggy shot it five times in a row," Steve says. "Do you all have guns too?"

"Not all of us," Sawyer says. "We pick 'em off of some of the nightmares. The criminal ones know how to make guns in Imagination Land, so we do a bit of cat and mouse every now and then. Get restocked and send 'em back in."

"But where is it?" Dugan twitches in his chair. 

"The rest of it is at the bunkhouse," Steve says.

"Peg's the best shot there is." Sawyer nudges Dugan and offers him another bottle. "It'd rather stay dead than revive for another fight with our Peggy."

"What's that you're drinking?" Steve asks. 

"Good spirits," Pinkerton calls from the far end of the table. "Catch!" Pinky tosses a bottle, and Steve misses spectacularly. The bottle shatters on the table and splinters of glass scatter. 

Steve sniffles and pulls a sizeable chunk of bottle out of his arm.

There's an upcry of "What were you thinking, Pinkerton!"s around the table. Bucky chugs the last of his bottle, cracks it on the table neatly into two pieces, and sweeps the shards of Steve's bottle into the bottom half of his bottle.

"Sorry!" Pinky calls. His voice is muffled from being in Sawyer's headlock. 

"We'll patch you up in Imagination Land as soon as it reopens," Bucky promises.

Steve examines his cut. It's gently oozing some sort of blue pus. He's never had an abrasion before and is immensely intrigued.

"You were asking about the good spirits," Juniper says, leaning over to carefully place a new bottle in front of Steve. "We harvest them from fading happy memories. Fading memories get some sort of condensation that the archives wicks away."

"Do you have other kinds of spirits too?" Steve asks. He tries and fails to pop the lid off of his bottle. Bucky, guffawing, reaches over to one-handedly open Steve's bottle. 

"We have battle juice," Morita says. "Three parts anger and one part fear. It heightens awareness and gives the semblance of courage. Good spirits bring us back to normal."

"So normal is happy?" Steve kicks his feet against the bench. 

"For us, yeah," Sawyer says. He gives Pinky one last noogie before releasing his head. "We exist, we have our job, and we're good at it. What's not to love?"

"We wouldn't be existing if it weren't for Peggy," Morita says. 

"How so?" Steve asks.

"Well, imaginary friends typically don't last too long." Morita shuffles uncomfortably on the bench. "Once we weren't playing with Captain Nicholas any longer, we were outlaws, scrounging for memories to keep us alive. It was only a matter of time before we ended up in the abyss."

The Howling Commandos shudder in unison.

"And what did Peggy do?" Steve leans forward as far as he can.

"No one knows where Peggy came from," Dugan says. He takes a dramatic swig from his bottle. "But one day the lady comes right up to us and barks, 'Soldiers, at attention!' And here we were, a fallen troop who had never had any order, standing in formation just because we were told to."

"Peggy gave us rank," Morita says. "And Peggy gave us a mission. She said 'Nicholas will never have a memory of you again. You can either wallow in that knowledge or dedicate yourself to joining my task force.'"

"And we've been protecting headquarters and safeguarding the archives ever since." Bucky smiles down at Steve. "Once you get your footing outside of headquarters, you should join us. First fight with hydra, and you survived. That's something."

"I made it grow more heads," Steve says. "Peggy's the one who killed it."

"Yeah, but you still survived, didn't you," Bucky snorts. "Let me give you a compliment, man."

"About hydra," Steve says, remembering now an unsatisfied question. "Peggy said that hydra was here. Are there more of them?"

"Thor said that there is never just one hydra," Juniper says. "And because of how hydra functions--cut off one head and two will take its place--that hydra may be predicated by lies."

"Nick has lied before," Steve points out. "And you said that there have never been hydra down here before."

"A whole different kind of lie," Morita says glumly. "A building block lie for a tower of lies. Something big is going on. Processing memories will be very important in the next few days."

"Where do they come from?" Steve asks. "If we can stop the source--"

"No good," Sawyer says. "If Thor's right in his predictions--"

"Which he nearly always is," Juniper interjects.

"--then hydra come from the Abyss of Lost Memories."

"I didn't see anything moving down there other than Bucky and Peggy," Steve says. "And I wandered across a good stretch of it." He thinks back to how he had felt in the abyss. There had been a suicidal sense of belonging, but he hadn't felt any menace about the place.

"We don't want to fight down there." Bucky waves his playdough arm. It flops unnaturally every which way. "At least not unless we can find better protective gear."

"Could we barricade the abyss?" Steve asks. "Have controlled points of entry that we patrol?"

"You're thinking like someone from HQ," Bucky says. "Our primary goal is, unless Peggy tells us otherwise, to protect HQ. We don't want to direct hydra to HQ by limiting our end of the abyss. We have to lure hydra over here and make sure that they don't wreak havoc on the archives."

"HQ is very secure, especially now that I'm not there," Steve says. "Anthony designed all sorts of protective measures."

"Previous attacks came from this side of the abyss," Bucky says. "The abyss has a direct loop to HQ. Where did you think all the memory materials came from? Those orbs are formed from the dust of old memories."

"Then I'll have to go in," Steve says.

"No way would we send you in there alone!" Dugan splutters, good spirits spraying. 

"I was in there as long as Bucky," Steve says. "And I'm perfectly fine. Maybe because I'm from HQ, I'm impervious to the effects of the abyss, but you all are definitely affected."

"And what about hydra?" Morita barks. "You want to stroll right into their nest, alone? What good would that do?"

"Not to mention that it would go against our imperative to protect HQ," Juniper adds. "Like it or not, because you're from HQ, our line of duty extends to protecting you."

"Then what would the point be of me even joining the Howling Commandos?" Steve demands. "Were you just planning on babysitting me until I decide to head back to headquarters?"

"It's either that or sorting memories," Bucky says. "You got to be reasonable, Steve. We can't be too risky with one of the lead emotions."

"I want to help!" Steve cries.

"Everybody, calm down!" Pinky yelps. "Look, Steve, so far we've only seen the one hydra. It doesn't mean that there's an invasion upon us right now. We don't understand anything about hydra. We don't have anywhere near enough intel to do a preemptive strike. This isn't the time to be rash. It's time to plan."

"And I offered my plan." Steve pushes back from the table and nearly topples from the bench. 

"Pinkerton's right," Morita says. "We have to know more before we send any man in, and especially you, Steve."

"I just don't think we should be wasting time." Steve folds his arms against his chest. "You're fooling yourselves if you think for one minute that, in the time that it would take to better understand hydra, hydra's not bettering understanding us. Hydra's at its weakest right now."

"Is it though?" Bucky asks. "Please, tell us your proof. How do you know they didn't send one man forward in hopes that we would respond by leaving zone."

"But you wouldn't be leaving zone!" Steve exclaims. "It would be just me, and I don't even have a zone."

"Don't think for a minute that that's not true!" Bucky yells. "You had your place. You had your people! And just because it got uncomfortable you're all ready to abandon it. So don't even try to pull out my men!"

"I'm not saying that a single one of your men has to do anything!"

"If you ever have a hope of making it with the Howling Commandos, you best get this straight, Steve; no part of HQ can ever come in line of direct fire, and that inescapably includes you. Understood?"

"Absolutely," Steve says tightly.

"Good." Bucky's breathing heavy as he turns away from Steve and calls for another good spirit.

"It was lovely meeting you all," Steve says. He stands from the table and, without looking back, drags away his shield.

"Steve!" Dugan shouts. "Oh, come on!"

"If he wants to go sort memories, then let him," Bucky grumbles. 

Steve barely makes it out the door before he's leaking tears. He has no idea how to get back to the bunkhouse. He sketches the rough map that Thor had drawn and reckons he can find Imagination Land. He can get his hand fixed first thing in the morning before he gets back to work sorting memories.

He hunches under the weight of his hopeless exhaustion and begins the long trek towards Imagination Land. His attention catches upon a retention bin for memories to be sorted and he thinks back to his last sad memory, now probably buried beneath all the new memories of today. Memories made without him. 

Steve sniffles and climbs onto the bin. He closes his eyes and must fall asleep, because the next thing he knows, there's a distant, echoing slurping noise jarring him awake. Steve blearily looks around and, belatedly, up. 

Green slime spouts through the memory transport. Steve gasps for breath and wades towards the side of the bin. He's spluttering and slipping and making minimal progress; his vision diminishes as the slime coats his eyelashes and sticks to his face. He hauls himself to the edge, teeters, and then he starts screaming.

He can feel his insides humming with unstable energy; he feels somehow simultaneously compressed and spread thin; overwhelmed and strained and agonized and...

He hears his name faintly and, with gargantuan effort, opens his eyes.

He is lying on the ground. Peggy stares down at him.

"Steve," she says sharply.

"Yes, ma'am." Steve scrambles to his feet. Peggy automatically moves as if to support him. One hand lights on his chests before fluttering to pull him upright.

"How do you feel?" Peggy asks insistently.

Steve looks down at her. Down at her?

Steve shakes his head and looks down at her.

"Taller."

Peggy's mouth wrenches into a shape somewhere between a laugh and a sob. 

"How come I'm taller, Peggy?"

"But how do you feel?" 

Steve thinks about it. "I feel great. Confused about what's going on, but great." He hesitantly reaches to wipe slime off of his face, but feels nothing.

"The conductor of the Train of Thought overheard some of the conversation in headquarters." Peggy runs a soothing hand up and down Steve's arm without seeming to be aware of it. "I came after you as soon as I heard; I knew it would come to you."

"What would come to me?" Steve demands. "What was that slime?"

"I can tell you that you were needlessly worried that you wouldn't be missed in headquarters," Peggy says. She realizes that she is stroking Steve's arm and backs away suddenly. "Bruce attempted to become more like you, to make himself a hybrid of what you are and what he is."

"Oh," Steve says quietly. 

"Of course it didn't work," Peggy says brusquely. "Any fool could have seen that the plan was a poor one. When he tried to duplicate you, his solution searched for you and attempted to join its source, its inspiration."

"So where did all the green slime go?"

Peggy smiles at him. "I believe you had a laceration on your arm, Steve."

Steve looks down at his arm. All that remains is a faint green scar, and even that is growing paler by the second. 

"You absorbed it, Steve," she says softly. "You're stronger than ever. You're more you than ever."

"I look nothing like me," Steve says. 

"Don't you feel it?" Peggy demands. "Don't you know what you need to do?"

Steve picks up his shield. "Absolutely."

Peggy smiles.

"I have to go defeat hydra."

Peggy's smile drops.

"I'm strong enough to," Steve continues, undeterred by her change in expression. "I'm not a liability now, am I?"

"Hell yes you are," Bucky says. Steve spins around and is immensely pleased to see that he has substantial height advantage on Bucky. "I'm not going to have you jeopardize our mission as you experiment with your new height and abilities. You lack the nuance and experience that our mission requires."

"I'm not working under you!" Steve snaps.

"Well you're certainly not working under me," Peggy says. She coolly stares down Steve. "I don't think you even know what you're wanting to fight."

"The monsters." Steve looks back and forth between Peggy and Bucky. "Hydra."

Peggy sighs. "Steve, do you love Nicholas?"

"Of course!"

"You don't get to pick the parts of a person to love," she says. "Every single monster that has ever made an appearance in this land is one of Nicholas' creations. They are his demons, his fears, his weaknesses. We don't get to destroy those parts of them. We get to protect who he is from the monsters that would seek to destroy. Do you understand, Steve?"

Steve opens his mouth to respond, but no words come out. He snaps his mouth shut as he processes the information, then nods curtly.

"So what do I need to do for training?" Steve asks. "Am I to sort memories until the Howling Commandos have developed a defense plan against hydra?" 

"It's not a bad plan," Bucky says. "You had the spirit, and now you have the build, to be an asset to the team." 

"Peggy?" Steve asks. Peggy's mouth is in a small, straight line.

"Excellent, Steve. If that is where you feel called." She gives him a meaningful look. Bucky gives him a thumbs up. 

Steve smiles. "Sure as I can be, ma'am."

Peggy's face is indecipherable as she turns heel and marches away. 

Bucky beams as he pokes at Steve's newly formed muscles and titters away about strike forces, defense priorities, and integrated strategies. Steve nods and watches as the thin green scar on his arm fades into yellow hues and disappears into his skin tone. 

He takes a moment to truly assess his body. Possibility surges through his muscles and he aches to move, to explode into action, to test his limits and see them fall away. He rolls his shoulders, bounces on the balls of his feet, and flashes Bucky a sharp grin.


	4. The End of the Line

Dugan bellows his glee as he pops the rolling step onto the archive shelf and pushes off into the fray of hydra. He leans off the step to clonk a hydra on the head. The beast goes cross-eyed and looks a bit annoyed as it slides into unconsciousness. 

"Clear!" Juniper shouts, and they all monkey up the rows of the archives just seconds before the bomb detonates. Nerve gas mists out from the bomb, covering the bottom few rows in several feet. A few of the hydra make aborted climbing motions before falling back to the mist.

The Howling Commandos clip their rolling steps onto the archive shelves and roll down a few aisles to safety.

"Is everyone accounted for?" Bucky calls. His eyes rove over the team in search for injuries.

"Yessir," Morita says.

"Let's get back in, then." Relief crinkles Bucky's face as they file into the fortress. 

Steve tosses down his shield and slams his hands down on the main conference table. "That was unacceptable."

"Sir?" Juniper raises a disbelieving eyebrow.

"We cannot be so careless about releasing biological hazards so close to camp."

"Steve," Bucky interrupts. "We were outmanned."

"So do we risk the functions of Long Term Memory over ourselves?" Steve demands. "I'm not blind. All of us know that the situation has only been growing worse. I'm asking what we're planning on sacrificing next. I know where I stand."

Bucky snorts. "Juniper knows perfectly well what he's doing--"

"How long until the mists clear?" Steve demands.

"A few hours, sir," Juniper says promptly.

"So in those few hours, we have limited our work routes, evacuation routes, and communication routes." Steve traces the carving of the nine realms upon the conference table. "We have successfully limited the productivity of the mind workers and the effects of the bombs can linger for days."

"What would you have us do, Steve?" Bucky's mouth twists into a mocking line. "Perhaps we could ask hydra to reschedule the fight for a different location? Maybe we could throw the whole thing off in favor of going out for drinks. Hydra probably couldn't handle good spirits; we'd be done with the battle in a day."

Steve shrugs off the sarcastic comment. He knows damn well that they've been out of good spirits for years; the Howling Commandos have sustained themselves on good spirits as long as they had existed, but at the current rate of happy memory production, they are lucky to get one bottle of good spirits a year. 

"Look." Bucky leans forward and speaks in low, gravelly tones. "This isn't about us protecting Long Term anymore. It hasn't been that for a while. It's all about keeping us functioning as long as we can. There's more hydra territory than not. It's the most we can do to run covert ops to ensure everything keeps functioning. We're not fighting to win right now, Steve. We're fighting to survive." He pats Steve on the shoulder, straightens up, and shouts "Morita, Sawyer, come on. We're on the Train of Thought today."

Morita and Sawyer throw salutes at Steve before trailing Bucky through the door.

Steve runs his hands through his hair and grows in frustration. He dislikes being kept on the defensive. He can't stand how they are closing themselves in, boxing and gift wrapping all the operations in Long Term Memory for hydra to swarm. 

"Dismissed," Steve announces, and the rest of the Howling Commandos leave the room. 

"Captain."

Steve looks up to see Peggy leaning against the doorframe. He can't read her expression beyond general weariness.

"Peggy," Steve says. 

"This isn't going to end on its own." She strides to the table. 

"Well there goes that plan," Steve huffs, and she gives him a small, private smile as she sits on the edge of the table.

"I mean it," Peggy says, serious once more.

"I'm here for Nick 'til the end of the line," Steve says stoutly. "Through thick and thin."

"He's not going to change on his own." Peggy crosses her hands in her lap. "It's going to be thin from here on out."

Despair swallows Steve whole, and he faceplants on the conference table before he can think better of it.

"Steve."

Steve peeks up through his fringe. "Peggy."

She looks as though she's considering patting his head. He wishes that she would, but he's also terrified that he would burst into tears if touched.

"Nick needs help," she says softly.

"What can I do?" He props his chin on his elbows and stays focused on Peggy. She is a closed and padlocked book, near impossible to read, and he doesn't want to miss a single cue.

"I think you know, Steve."

Steve stares blankly at Peggy. "Clue me in, Peggy."

She spins to her feet, taps her temple, and gives him a sharp nod before marching out of the room.

Steve raises a hand to his temple as he watches her leave. His gaze falls to the table and focuses upon Midgard.

"Of course," Steve says absentmindedly. "Where else?"

He grabs his radio and beeps for Bucky. Bucky's staticky voice answers immediately.

"Ay, ay, captain."

"I need to catch the train immediately," Steve says. "Which stop should I head to?"

"We're coming up on the Island of Opportunity. I'd cut to Power Island and join us there; we'll be there in a few minutes."

Steve takes off at a sprint. The islands are relatively safe; hydra seem more interested in Long Term Memory than Nick's islands of personality. All he has to do is make it through the archives. He gets a good jump onto the shelves and climbs up a bit higher just to be on the safe side before hooking his rolling step onto the ledge and pushing off as hard as he can manage. 

It is ridiculous that he hasn't considered telling headquarters the situation earlier. Once Steve tells the others how bad it has gotten in Long Term Memory, they'll tread extra carefully with Nick and soon he'll be happy, hydra will be gone, and the Howling Commandos will be awash with good spirits. 

"Captain," Bucky says on the radio. "We're just pulling away from the Island of Opportunity. You have two minutes to get to Power Island."

"Understood," Steve radios back.

"What has you itching to get on the train?" Bucky asks. "Tired of grouching?"

"Ready to fix things," Steve says.

"That's my man. Always has a plan."

Steve rolls his eyes, unclips his rolling step, leaps across a row, and reattaches. "About earlier, Bucky..."

"We're good," Bucky interrupts. "You don't owe me any apologies."

"That's some wishful thinking. I only apologize when I'm wrong, Barnes."

Bucky's response comes back droll. "Of course, Captain."

Steve rolls around a corner and catches sight of Power Island. The Train of Thought is starting to slow down as it draws closer to the station, glistening and...

The tracks are not glistening. Steve squints at the dark tracks as he approaches Power Island and it takes him but half a second to recognize it for what it is.

A giant hydra is coiling around the train tracks, slithering ever forward as the track vanishes from the rear and appears in the front. As he watches, the front track slices off three of the heads and six more heads sprout forth. 

"Bucky!" Steve says tightly into the radio. "You have a track situation."

"Eh?"

"There's the largest hydra I've ever seen growing on the tracks. You cannot let it reach headquarters!"

Bucky doesn't radio back, but Steve sees his touseled head and Playdough arm pop out the window of a sidecar and withdraw back in immediately.

"Bucky," Steve says helplessly into his radio.

"Any tips?" Bucky asks. "Captain, what are my orders?"

"I'm coming," Steve says. He tucks his radio into his belt so he has both hands to push himself along faster. Power Island looms ahead of the line that he's on, and he can see up ahead, bigger than reality, the hydra. 

Steve pushes off from his rolling steps and shoots into Power Island. He sprints up to a window and dives in just as the train begins moving again.

"We can't stop the train," Morita says bluntly from the other side of the car. Steve grunts disagreeably and sticks his head back out the window.

"I don't know how to fight something that big," Sawyer says. "It's got enough heads it could breathe in a nerve bomb and still be kicking."

"Where's Bucky?" Steve demands. 

"Front car," they say simultaneously. 

"He's trying to stop the train," Sawyer elaborates.

Steve sizes up Sawyer and Morita. "Do you still have your rolling steps?"

"Yessir."

"Good," Steve says. He puts a hand on each of their shoulders. "I'm going to need you to guide the mind workers to safety."

He sees Sawyer's brow arch in realization of his plan just before Steve chucks them out the window. They land on Power Island and immediately scramble to their feet, looking for a way to reboard the train.

"Bucky," Steve shouts into his radio. "Get the mind workers to safety." He hears alarmed shouts and spots a few of the mind workers flying out of the engine, but doesn't see Bucky jump too. "Barnes, take them all the way to safety!" he barks. There's radio silence, so he shouts again. "Barnes, get them to safety."

"Morita and Sawyer count as safe." Bucky swings through a window and winks at Steve. "Oh, hello there, Captain. Come here often?"

The train shoots past the outer edges of Power Island and Steve pulls Bucky to his chest.

"Woah, there, partner," Bucky says. He pats Steve awkwardly on the back.

"Idiot," Steve sniffles into his collar. He can tell Bucky's smiling by the way his ear lifts a little against Steve's cheek.

"I'm trusting there's a plan at this point," Bucky says. "Other than riding this to the end, that is."

"That's the contingency plan." Steve slaps Bucky on the back and withdraws. 

"Just tell me what to do." 

"The train is moving as long as Nick is awake," Steve says.

"We can't make him fall asleep."

"Can we make him lose his train of thought?" 

Bucky grabs his radio. "Howling Commandos, whichever one of you gets a naked lady picture to HQ fastest has my portion of the next bottle of good spirits." He sets down his radio and beams at Steve's red face. "You weren't going to make the call. You would've wanted him to think about leaving the stove on."

"It's demeaning," Steve insists. 

"We've got under two minutes until this train ports at HQ." Bucky raises an eyebrow at Steve. "Maybe we stop worrying about slowing the train down and start worrying about making it fully operationable. We don't know how much time we've got." 

"We have to turn this thing on itself," Steve says. "I don't think we can escape this one, Bucky."

"That's not our highest calling." Bucky clips his radio back into his belt. "Just tell me what to do."

"Gouge out a side and flag me down," Steve says. "I'll come to you."

Bucky's radio buzzes. "Mission accomplished, Bucky!"

Steve looks out the window as the track turns into a lecherously sharp upward-winding spiral. The movement is so sudden that the train nearly falls off its tracks. Bucky loses his footing and slams into the window frame.

"See you soon," Bucky calls, and he dives out the window. Steve fastens his shield to his back, opens the door, and leaps down into the tracks. 

There are a few delicious moments of free fall before Steve latches on to the scaly side of the massive hydra. He runs along its undulating back and ducks under some of the heads that turn to attack. The heads are not particularly coordinated in their attack; they treat Steve more like a nuisance than a threat. 

"How big are you wanting your gouge?" Bucky demands. "I've got a pretty good slice here, and it's turning me into a bit of a target."

"Excellent," Steve says. He grabs a head behind the jaws, weaves through the other heads, and races back down the hydra's spine. The head snaps harmlessly at his side and heads strike down behind him against his shield. "Coming in, Barnes."

He finds the swarming heads before he sees Bucky. Steve tightens his grip on the hydra heads and calls "Miss me?" as he slides into place next to Bucky. 

"Only half as much as you were missing me."

It's been seven years, and it's still as thrilling as the first time standing back to back with Bucky Barnes, facing unbeatable odds with indomitable spirit. 

"You hold off those," Steve orders, whacking off his hydra head. As the next one sprouts, he slices again. And again. "It's going to get harder in a minute."

"No kidding," Bucky snorts. Steve continues slicing off the heads, swings up to wrap his legs around the hydra's body, and shoves the rapidly regrowing stump into the hole in the creature's side. All the hydra heads immediately turn towards Steve, and Bucky swears. "Need any more, Captain?"

"Not at the moment." The growing heads bulge the sides of the hydra and Steve holds the neck into the body until the heads have grown too numerous to be pulled out. "And...we're moving."

He snags another head and runs further down the body. Bucky trails him, slightly slower, fighting off heads with every step. 

The track stops spiralling upward and turns again towards headquarters. 

"And you're thinking this is going to do the job?" Bucky pants as Steve slices another hole in the side. 

"Got anything better?" Steve tugs out a handful of guts and begins methodically chopping at the neck of the hydra head in his hand. 

"No." Bucky grunts as he loses his footing but manages to make a fairly graceful recovery. The regrowing hydra heads squirm, but Steve relentlessly shoves them into the hydra's side. "But we're back to two minutes tops."

"And doing great," Steve says. "Give us two more, Bucky."

"I'd like to see some more effort from you," Bucky growls, but he nonetheless trails Steve further down the hydra's back. 

"You want to trade places?" 

"Hell no. You only know how to fight with your giant dinner platter." Bucky gives him an all-teeth smile without taking his eyes from the growing horde of hydra.

"Try not to sound too jealous," Steve huffs as he braces to start another incision. 

Steve is chopping at the neck when Bucky takes a misstep and tumbles to his knees and off the spine. Bucky gasps as he falls and land amidst angry heads. 

"BUCKY!" Steve bellows. 

"Carry on, then!" Bucky shouts. 'For Christsakes, don't let go!"

"Speak for yourself!" Steve pokes the edges of the cut to see if there are enough heads formed to hold the heads in place before sprinting to Bucky. The hydra curls back around itself, sensing the approaching defeat of its attackers. Steve grabs another head and runs down the spine, down till he's under one of the last supports for the train track. "Almost there, Bucky!" The writhing, hissing cacophony is too loud for Steve to think; he hugs the body with his legs as he hacks at the side. The hydra doubles back towards Steve and time slows down as Bucky's body is tossed into the air. Bucky spins, mouth gaping in comical amazement, arms spread wide, legs kicking at thin air...

Bucky locks eye contact with Steve, and Steve doesn't know if he is hearing him or reading his lips when he speaks. "Bring back the good spirits, Steve."

The reforming track slices the front two thirds of the hydra and, with a terrible scream, everything falls.

Steve leaps from the plummeting hydra as Bucky begins his flailing descent. He kicks off from shrieking hydra heads to get closer to Bucky. They tumble through the mist and Steve's eyes sting as he strains to keep Bucky in his sights. Whirring air numbs his ears to sound, but he thinks he might be screaming.

"Bucky!"

Steve lands hard and scrambles to his feet. The orbs are slippery with hydra guts and he scrambles in the direction he last saw Bucky. The hydra heads are ripping open the sides of the body as they attempt to pull the heads out of its body. Steve warily watches the monster tear itself apart as passes the last bunches to resprouting heads. But, with a pounding sense of urgency, he can't slow too much.

There's someone he has to find, something he has to do. 

He slows down, trying to remember what exactly that is.

Steve realizes that he's running in the wrong direction. He shakes his head, focuses on his mission, readjusts his direction towards headquarters, and runs on. 

He steps on something that looks suspiciously like a radio, but it crumbles into dust under his boots before he can get a decent look at it. A hand to his belt reassures him that he still has his radio, so it's a moot point anyways. He's running too fast to slip now; his red boots hardly press on the orbs as he sprints to headquarters. 

He's still a good distance out when he wallops into an unforgiving invisible wall. Steve just barely manages to land in a crouch. Headquarters only put the force field up at nighttime, and he doubts that so much time has passed since he leapt down from the train and went mano a fangdango with the hydra. Holding one careful hand out, Steve approaches the force field with measured steps. 

The forcefield doesn't particularly feel like anything. The air is tense and hard under his fingertips, and even though Steve knows that it orbs around all of headquarters, it feels fairly flat. Steve experimentally taps the forcefield with his shield. 

Steve grabs his radio. "Howling Commandos, do you read me?" He asks. It's half a second before voices overlap in response.

"Captain!"

"You're alive!" 

"What can we do for you, Captain?"

"Where are you, Captain?"

"He's the the Abyss. I saw him disembark."

"Damn, Captain, what are you playing at?"

"Listen up, Howling Commandos," Steve barks, and the radio buzzes to static quiet with a last, impudent "Sir yes sir!" from Juniper. "I'm going to need a means of getting through the forcefield. Next time the train is coming through, I'm going to need one of you to throw me a line and pull me up into headquarters."

"Sir," Morita says.

"Permissions to speak, soldier."

"The train doesn't pull into HQ. Hasn't for two years now."

"That can't be true," Steve says. "How else would headquarters get facts and opinions? How would the mindworkers update the control panel?"

"They don't," Morita says quietly.

"So Nick is operating with a model sixteen panel?" Steve slams a fist into the forcefield and is flung backwards by the reverberating force in his arm. "He's eighteen years old. That's very different."

"It gets updates from inside, sir," Sawyer says. 

"So what does the train do?" Steve demands. "Or did I just waste my time coming down here?"

"At least you were only wasting your time, sir," Juniper says promptly. 

"The train comes in every day," Dugan says. "Every day they try to get in, and every time Anthony denies the request."

Just the name Anthony sends a shiver through Steve. Within a month of life outside of headquarters, he had adapted. He thought of headquarters as his mission to protect, not as his first home. He hadn't thought of any of their names in years. He hadn't considered that, in warning headquarters that Nick's mind was turning on itself, he would be seeing them again. He leans against the forcefield and is overwhelmed by the barrage of memories and the question of how he stood with headquarters.

"Captain!" Dugan says. "Give us your position and we'll do a retrieval mission."

"You don't want to do that," Steve says.

"I swear, if this is another one of those depression funks--"

"No, it's not." Steve rubs a hand over his eyes. "If you come down here, you'll be forgotten." He doesn't know how he knows that, but as soon as he says it, he knows that it's true. 

"Tell us what to do, Captain."

"I've got to find another way in," Steve says. "Tell me if you think of anything."

He sets his radio back on his belt holster and tilts his head up to look at the swirling mists. He wonders if that's what they will all turn into eventually, just little particles floating from one edge of the abyss to the other.

Steve jerks upright, banging his head on the forcefield. It smarts, but he pays it no mind as he leaps to his feet and studies how the mist drifts overhead, as if the forcefield weren't present. Steve curves a hand around a memory and presses it to the forcefield.

The dull memory crumples into the forcefield and Steve whoops as a wisp of memory mist shoots out the other side.

"Captain," Morita says, and Steve picks his radio back up.

"Yes, Morita."

"There's no way through the forcefield, sir. We're planning your rescue. Hold tight."

"Abort," Steve orders. "I'm making progress."

"Sir?"

"I'll radio you when I need pick-up," Steve says. "Don't rush me."

Steve smashes a memory against his shield and, with the mist still furling around the edges, slides his shield through the forcefield. His shield gets stuck partway through, so Steve pulls it back out. He backs up a few steps and hurls his shield to the ground before the forcefield. 

Memories disintegrate into a giant, dusty cloud. When Steve, eyes watering and coughing hard, can finally see again, he beams.

The shield rests on the other side of forcefield. 

Steve hoots and hollers his delight before regaining his sense of urgency. He backs up to get a running start, leaps up into the air, and dives, arms shielding his head, into the memories in front of the forcefield. There's a moment of tight pressure and then Steve has a hand on his shield and is rolling to his feet on the other side of the force field. 

Relief gives him a kick of adrenaline and he sprints as soon as he is back on his feet. 

"I'm through," he shouts into his radio as soon as his throat is clear of the memory dust. 

The headquarters loom up ahead and Steve tries to assess it as he draws nearer. There's no convenient ladder or stairs. Whereas the sides of the abyss have the bluffs, there are no handholds or footholds in sight. The smooth metal curves up higher than the edges of the abyss. 

Steve jogs up to the base and splays a hand over the side. It feels weird to be touching headquarters. Weird, but right.

He tries to jump up and hug the base, but it's too big for him to get his arms and legs around. Steve slides back down to the base. The failed attempt makes Steve scowl and something within him snaps. 

"Now's the time," he grunts. Steve jogs back away from the base, bounces on the balls of his feet, and sprints to the headquarters base. He manages to run up a solid thirty feet; twists sideways, and wraps around the base full-bodied. He moves his hands closer together and activates the shield magnet on his cuff. 

The shield shoots towards Steve and he drops off the base to kick off from the shield. He falls a few feet but manages to gain fifteen in altitude. The shield shoots back, still responding to the magnet, and Steve leaps again.

It feels like the roller coasters from Nick's dreams: constant drops and sharp rises that make Steve's mouth dry. He's fatiguing before he's halfway up, the gains from the jumps are growing smaller and smaller, and Steve doesn't have time to wipe sweat out of his eye, time to breathe even, before leaping again.

The base gets wider and Steve is sliding further and further down every time he lands. He feels like his body is on the verge of imploding. Every part of his body feels as though it is on fire. His leaps are turning into hops; he's kicking off from the shield then the base then the shield.

What feels like two eternities later, Steve catches reaches the bottom of the headquarters platform and throws his body over a support. It restricts his breathing substantially, but his body is too weak for him to sit up properly. He stares down into the mist and can't see the ground. 

It takes him a few minutes to regain enough feeling in his body to prop himself up on the ledge and look out over the nine realms. It's a view that he's never had before. Even when he was living at headquarters, he didn't look out of the window very much. He feels out of time up this high, mere feet below his first home and looking out over his world. He can't see hydra, can't see how the majority of memories glow a violent red, can't see any of the details of Nick's mind but knows where every detail lies.

He feels like he's holding onto who Nick is. The responsibility of it all straightens his back and broadens his shoulders.

Steve pats his shield fondly, hooks it to his back, and prepares to climb the rest of the way. 

It's doesn't take him long to swing to a window and he looks into headquarters for the first time since leaving.

He's near the mind manuals and he sees Anthony and Bruce's lab. It hasn't changed at all, and affection punches Steve in the chest, leaving him sore and ready to come home. Beaming, he knocks on the glass. He wiggles around on his perch, attempting to see if anyone hears him and is coming, but the lab blocks his view. Steve wields his shield, smashes the glass, and rolls into the room. Red lights start flashing from everywhere and an automated voice calmly states "Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert."

"Hello?" Steve calls, and when he blinks, he's face to face with a giant robot. Steve turns his back away from the window and leans into a defensive crouch. "Natasha? Bruce?"

"Steve?" 

Steve turns right before he's tackled. He turns his fall into a roll and is back onto his feet in an instant, looking down to see Clint plastered to his side.

"Clint!"

"You're alive," Clint says. "We all assumed..."

"Intruder alert," the robot says.

"Stand down, Jarvis," Natasha says. She sashays over and looks Steve up and down. "What happened to you?"

"Joined the army," Steve says. He ducks his head. "I've been running with the Howling Commandos for a while, but I had to come back."

"Took you long enough," Natasha says. She punches Steve in the arm. "You'll have to tell us everything."

There's a mechanical cocking and Steve looks up to see Anthony hovering midair, two dozen weapons pointed straight at Steve.

"That's not Steve," Anthony says coldly. "We saw him fall."

"He's still got the shield," Clint says. He points at Steve's shield for emphasis.

"Anyone can hold a shield; that doesn't make them Steve," Anthony says. "In matter of fact, anyone but Steve could hold a shield. That he can shows that he's not."

"Where's Bruce?" Steve asks, looking around the room. "He'll be able to explain..." He trails off when he spots Bruce rocking on the floor next to the mutant control panel.

Bruce looks gaunt and stricken despite the bulbous cords of muscle that stretch along his neck and arms. His frantic eyes roll in his head and the rocking continually flexes and extends the muscles so it looks more like there's a parasite wriggling under Bruce's skin than musculature.

Clint and Natasha shove Steve down as Anthony unleashes fiirepower in their direction. Steve rolls them all behind his shield.

"YOU DON'T GET TO ASK ABOUT BRUCE!" Anthony bellows. 

"Okay!" Steve sticks his hands in the air as he stands. "Why not?"

"You abandoned us," Anthony grows. He positions himself squarely in front of Bruce. 

"Not on purpose!" Steve protests. "I was just trying to keep the shield, remember?"

"Let's see." Anthony sounds a worrying combination of reasonable and lethally sarcastic. "I remember you aligning with the monsters and nearly sacrificing headquarters--"

"I didn't align-"

"FUCKING SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Anthony screams. 

Steve, aghast at the swears, falls mute. Anthony continues talking as though he hadn't been interrupted. 

"I remember you attempting to undermine my authority when I moved to dearm you. You attempted to turn the others against me by following the shield out the window."

"It didn't happen like that!"

"You didn't come back," Natasha says. "We thought you were dead, and that would have made sense. Why didn't you come back if you were alive?"

Anthony smugly crosses his arms and levels an eyebrow at Steve. 

"And why are you coming back now?" Clint asks. "Why did you break through all of our barriers from the monsters?"

Steve looks between Clint and Natasha.

"I had to come back," Steve says. "It's really bad out there. I don't know how much longer Long Term Memories will be operable. Just today, the Train of Thought was under siege. Every day is a battle, and it's getting worse." He swallows hard. "I know that I did wrong here. I knew that I didn't belong--"

"That's not true--"

"It's totally true, Clint," Steve says wearily. 

"Repairs complete," the robot intones. Steve spins around to see that the robot has patched up the hole he had made in the window.

"Thanks," he says uncertainly.

"Good work, Jarvis," Clint beams, but when he looks back to Steve, his smile falls.

"I'll go back to Long Term Memories," Steve says. "I just needed to bring you the message that whatever is going on here isn't working."

"What would you know?" Anthony snorts.

"Exactly," Steve says. "What could I know? Other than you no longer get deliveries from the Train of Thought and you haven't been receiving hardware updates from outside of headquarters? Other than the fact that nearly every single memory is red, and we haven't had a happy memory last longer than two days in years. There's no balance."

"How could there be balance without there being five of us?" Natasha crosses her arms and glares at Steve.

"I saved Nick. I saved Nick when you went awol," Anthony sneers.

"I don't know how true that is," Steve says quietly. 

"We need to get back to controls," Natasha says. "Anthony?"

Anthony turns to the control panel and Steve follows before he decides to move. 

He hasn't been watching the memories over the years. There hasn't been time between defending mind workers, leading defensive strikes into hydra territory, and planning the next moves. Even had there been time, the memories were not his. He had given up that life. 

But here, sitting in front of the large screen into Nick's reality, he is overcome by how much he has been missing. He sits on the floor next to Bruce and smiles up as Nick rounds a street corner.


	5. A Farewell to Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve doesn't like the new Nicholas.

Theo looked over when Nicholas rounded the corner. 

"Gotta even hun'red on you," he grunted. He stayed leaning against the wall. 

"I got you." Nicholas said. "You got me?"

"You know." Theo dug into his pocket for a few long seconds before producing a pair of cigars and a matchbook. He passed Nicholas one and stuck the other end in his mouth. "Get on in there, Joe."

Nicholas took a drag on the cigar, elbowed Theo, and stalked towards the alleyway door. Theo moved to slap him outside the head, but caught himself.

"I know you wouldn't hit your money maker," Nicholas called without looking back.

"You know I wouldn't be placing bets none neither." Theo leaned back against the wall and exhaled. "Oh, wait."

Nicholas affectionately flicked him off and went through the door.

Greedo bounded up to him instantly and loudly cleared a way through the bidders. In between his shouts, he whispered sternly to Nicholas with a large, plastic smile still smeared across his face.

"Still a fucking amateur, Joe? You were supposed to be here an hour ago."

"I'm not coming out for the pregaming."

"Like hell. You missed three matches."

"I told you that I'm not fighting anyone who--"

"Yada yada hell no. You fight with us, you fight with who we tell you to fight. Period."

"You asking me to move on, Greedo? You think for a second I couldn't find another bracket?"

"No," Greedo said surlily. 

"I'm not running through greenhorns," Nicholas snapped. "Don't try and waste my time like that."

"You're right," Greedo said.

"Damn straight." Nicholas tossed his head and caught a glimpse of Greedo's squinty-eyed stare. "Don't do it again."

Greedo's smile morphed into a snarl. Nicholas smirked just to rub it in and ducked under the curtain into his stall. He popped open his locker and began wrapping his hands. Greedo's knees were still visible under the curtain. 

There were very few people that Nicholas hated more than Greedo. The man had picked him up in hooligan street fights and set him up with established professional street fighters. He thought that making that connection made Nicholas his. Greedo was taking a long time to learn that Nicholas was nobody's.

Nicholas rolled his shoulders and pushed back through the curtain.

"Go to the bench," Greedo ordered. He had no trace of a smile now.

Nicholas felt his hackles raise. "You want to try that again, Greedo?"

"Get your ass on the bench," Greedo said, and added, through gritted teeth, "please."

"That wasn't so hard, now was it?" 

If looks could kill, Nicholas would be a smoldering pile of ash. Nicholas turned and glided to the opponent's bench.

"You're dead," Matthis said as Nicholas landed next to him.

"You talking to me?" Nicholas snarled, and Matthis held up his hands placatingly. 

"Why you antagonizing Greedo like that? He don't respond well to that."

"You looking to antagonize me?" Nicholas demanded. 

"You antagonize yourself," Matthis said.

Matthis was potentially the second most tolerable person present after Theo. He had guided Nicholas through the first five bloody weeks of fights. Unfortunately, he always was gunning to be some kind of father figure to Nicholas. Nicholas had had enough of fathers. 

"Shuddup."

Matthis snorted, and Nicholas' rage began to boil. 

"Just be careful out there," Matthis said seriously.

"You be careful, old man."

"I wouldn't put it past Greedo to stick a pick on you."

"It'd cost him money."

"There are sweeter things than money."

"You turning into a grams, Matthis?"

"Just saying, Joe--"

"Just saying shuddup," Nicholas snapped. 

"Alright."

Nicholas looked across the line at the other bench to eye the competition. The kid in line against him looked like a twelve year old girl, all lean and no muscle. He recognized the body type from previous fights. He'd be a martial artist, was probably actually in his twenties or potentially thirties, and would spend time in the air. Matthis had taught him how to handle the type. 

Nicholas stared out at the filling seats.

"I coulda had another hamburger," he grumbled. "I won't be fighting for another half hour."

Matthis smiled indulgently and Nicholas wanted to punch him in the face. Instead he took another drag from his cigar and flicked off some embers from the end. Matthis patted down the sparks that landed on his shorts.

Bo got slaughtered in the first match and Glass Robbins put up a good ten minute fight before admitting defeat to T. Slugs. Nicholas made a big deal of not watching Matthis' fight. Matthis had fought Big Boy multiple times in the past month, and they knew each other well enough that the same strikes and counterstrikes hadn't changed much. 

His fight was uneventful. Nicholas bobbed and dodged Shanghai until Shanghai crouched in preparation to make an airstrike. Nicholas went down as he went up, knocked him over with a hard elbow, and pummeled his face until Shanghai gave in.

When Nicholas was first getting into fighting, long before he met Greedo, he would fight when he was angry, release that tension, and go along with his life. Being punched felt like slamming into unrelenting relief from the mundane stupidity and phoniness of everything. Without his noticing, things had started changing. Hits landed were life proving its incompetencies and hit received were notifications that he was failing. Hits missed on either end were infuriating denials of an unseen friction. 

Now, he was sitting on a bench with anger swallowing him whole and he wanted nothing more than to take on the world with his fists until the world gave in. Matthis noticed his mood and declined to comment. Nicholas, glowering, thought it took Matthis long enough to figure out.

When Nicholas stepped into the ring for his third round, he was facing one of the champions from the greens. He spat over his shoulder, yawned, and squatted into a shallow fighting stance. Blackbeard, undeterred by the taunt, dropped into his stance. His eyes were slightly cross-eyed, and Nicholas couldn't be sure whether he was staring at the starting bell or Nicholas. Not that it mattered.

Blackbeard moved half a second before the claxon hit the bell. Nicholas waited for Blackbeard, ducked, juked, and wove behind him, and yanked him over his shoulder. Blackbeard hit the ground hard, but nonetheless managed to spring back to his feet.

For someone who had just emerged from a bracket that afternoon, he was fresh. It just meant Nicholas got a better fight.

Blackbeard started walking the perimeter, and Nicholas snapped. He didn't dance for nobody, and especially not on someone else's lead. 

Blackbeard did some fancy footwork and got himself enough distance that Nicholas' punch landed soft. He span towards Nicholas, got too close, and attempted a flurry into his chin. He might have succeeded had Nicholas not tackled him to the ground and begun whaling at his face. Blackbeard tried to hold Nicholas off with one hand, and Nicholas was enraged that he wouldn't even attempt to properly defend himself. He slammed Blackbeard's arm down and pinned it under his knee.

There was a quiet snick, and Blackbeard convulsed his body. Angry that Blackbeard was putting up a fight so late, Nicholas moved to headbutt him just as Blackbeard's other arm came swinging up with a sharp flash of silver.

There was a flash of what could have been fear, and then Nicholas was near blind with rage.

-*-  
"This is new," Steve says hesitantly as headquarters is overcome by the bittersweet smell of the cigar.

"You're new," Anthony says hotly.

"You get used to it." Natasha tosses her hair over her shoulder and waves a hand to try and see through the haze collecting around the screen.

"Who's Theo?"

"He's a friend," Clint says brightly. 

"He likes us," Natasha clarifies. "We aren't friends with him, Clint. That would be disastrous to Nick's social standing." Clint rolls his eyes and shrugs at Steve as he fiddles with some knobs on the control panel.

"What is this place?" Steve patters around the control panel and walks closer to the screen. 

"Too many people," Bruce mutters.

"Nick's job," Clint says. 

"Oh. Greedo," Natasha huffs. She elbows Clint out of the way and slaps at a few buttons. 

"Is he...mad?" Steve takes a few steps back and cocks his head and Greedo's maniacally beaming face.

"He doesn't even know mad." Anthony slides in front of Natasha and starts rocking the throttle. "We can get him there, though."

"He's not used to having people stand up for themselves," Clint explains. "Nick likes to watch him squirm."

"Does he?" Steve asks flatly. He stares at Anthony, who is cackling as he makes small, sharp movements with the throttle. Clint, at his side, is bopping buttons as if he's playing a game of wackamole. Natasha leans against the end of the board and Bruce continues to whimper under the control panel.

"Just because you want Nick to be sad--" Anthony starts hotly, and Steve spins around to glare at him "--doesn't mean--"

"It just seems like you're deciding a lot." Steve shuffles his feet. "And it is sad that Greedo's talking to him like this."

"Which is exactly why we can't accept it," Anthony says firmly. 

"Wait," Steve says. "Why is Nick wrapping his hands?"

"Protection," Bruce says faintly. 

Steve stares at the screen. "He's fighting."

"Professionally," Natasha says, as though that makes it better.

"Maybe not professional-professional," Clint wavers. His hands falter at the panel. 

"We get paid." Natasha taps a button as the screen shows them the tailored knees of Greedo on the other side of the curtain. "That counts as professional."

"See, once we were rid of you," Anthony says as he turns down a knob, "Nick was no longer weak. He's stronger than he's ever been." 

"This isn't strength," Steve protests. "What's happening out there in Long Term Memories isn't strength."

"Oh, really?" Anthony snarks. "Then what would you call this?" He beckons to the screen as a glowing Greedo resentfully drops a "please" onto the end of his order. "That is one grown man listening to a teenager. Who exactly is stronger there?"

"Refusing to feel weak isn't strength," Steve insists. "That's cowardice." 

Anthony's eyebrows puff up angrily. "Say that again, Steve. I dare you."

"Cowardice," Steve says firmly. "How messed up is that? I would have thought that Bruce would be most likely to be a coward--no offense, Bruce--but it's you. You're not upholding anger. You’re not an Anthony. You should be Howard because you're the biggest coward here. You can't even man up to the fact that Nick isn't okay--"

"And you're an expert on that, are you?" Anthony says sharply. "What are you to Nick? To headquarters?"

Steve winces at the sting of the words but bites back "And what are you, under that tin can?"

Anthony slaps a button on the control panel and shoots into the air. "My suit has you all nervous there, Steve? Twice what you are all at once, and that’s not even considering my work." He gestures to the room as a whole. "I understand your intimidation, Steve. It must be hard when you exist to ensure misery."

"I could show you misery," Steve starts hotly, but then he is tucking and rolling out of the way at Anthony aims and fires at him.

"Not in headquarters!" Bruce squeaks. 

"Tone it down, boys." Natasha rolls her eyes without looking away from the screen. "Anthony, we're due for a fight soon."

"Nick doesn't need to fight," Steve insists.

"He doesn't need to not fight either," Clint shrugs. "And given how he likes fighting and he's good at fighting, there's no real problem with it."

"Jarvis, we're going to be putting this on hold," Anthony says. Steve turns just as the robot twists his arms behind his back.

"Not necessary, Anthony!" Steve yells. The robot is holding him on his tiptoes and he can't swing his body far enough to gain any leverage. Anthony smirks as he struts back to the control panel. Natasha and Clint scamper out of the way and Anthony looms in front of the screen.

Steve watches the screen in horror as Nick steps into the ring.

"Leave Nick alone!"

"I am Nick!" Anthony says. He flexes his fingers and grabs the controls.

"We are Nick!" Steve corrects. "You, me, Bruce, Natasha, Clint, the islands of personality, Long Term Memories--"

Anthony makes a hand motion and one of the robot hands slams into Steve's throat. Steve breaks off with a gasp and watches wide-eyed as Nick's opponent charges. 

Anthony's rage is different from what Steve remembers. He looks comfortable at the control panel, more like he's scheming than raving. Steve can't see how he's moving the levers and throttle on the panel; he can only see the broad smooth back of the suit as it flexes with every motion. 

Anger isn’t a reaction. It’s an easy habit.

On the screen, Nick's opponent whimpers his defeat. Clint and Natasha clap and Anthony takes a bow.

It's as he's coming back up that Steve finally notices what he should have noticed when he first made it back to headquarters.

Anthony used to be minimally bigger than Steve; Natasha had a few inches over him, and Bruce and Clint towered over him.

Now Clint and Natasha come up to Steve's sternum, which makes some sense, because he grew a lot after exposure to Bruce's concoction. 

What doesn't make any sense is that Anthony is still approximately Steve's height. 

Steve takes a deep breath and relaxes his body. As Jarvis' grip tightens, Steve uses the little extra space to twist, activate the magnet on his wrist, and decapitate the robot with his incoming shield.

"JARVIS!" Anthony screams, and if Steve didn't know any better, he would have thought that the sound is one of heartbreak.

Steve finishes twisting out of the spluttering robot's arms and lands on the ground in a crouch. He looks up with narrowed eyes and orders "Take off the suit, Anthony."

"Not in the place to be giving orders," Anthony says as he shoots into the air. A dozen guns pop out of the armor, all aimed at Steve. "Do you want to leave, or shall I make you?"

"That's not an option."

"I make my own options," Anthony says, and Steve barely manages to duck behind his shield as Anthony unleashes his booming, blinding firepower.

"Can you even see the irony here?" Steve demands when there's a lull in the firepower. He ducks as Anthony fires a missile at him. "One part of Nick attacking the other part of Nick? I'm even defending myself with the shield you made me! We're not on different sides, Anthony!"

Anthony rockets towards Steve and knocks him flat on his back. Steve barely manages to maintain his grip on the shield.

"I see how you perverted my creation," Anthony snipes. "Beheading Jarvis with my gift. You're never allowed back."

"You don't get to decide that!"

"You'll find that I do."

Anthony turns on the spot in the air and shoots in the opposite direction. Steve tucks the shield into place behind his back and leaps onto Anthony's leg. Anthony rights himself and twirls in mid-air. The circumferential force pulls Steve away from Anthony and he slides off to crash through a window. 

"Good riddance!" Anthony shouts after him.

Steve manages grabs at the support beams for the platform and, after a few breathtaking moments of sliding uncontrollably towards the wide, slippery base, manages to gain enough traction to stop moving. He can still hear Anthony shouting, but the words are indistinguishable. He takes a deep breath before climbing back to the broken window.

As he draws closer, he can hear some of the conversation.

"He breaks through all of our headquarters defenses and then wants Anthony to step out of the armor? It's suspicious."

"It was good to see him again, though."

"Should we bring him back? Maybe he was just having a hard time getting up to speed. It's been a long time since Steve was in headquarters."

"Don't talk about him, don't think about him. It's as apparent as ever that Steve is interested in undermining our every mood at headquarters."

"What about what he was saying about outside of headquarters?"

"And do we have any proof of that?"

"We don't have any proof contradicting that."

"You're a soft touch, Clint."

"It is true that we're aren't all getting equal access to the panel--"

"And you think you're stronger than me? I thought we agreed that Nick needed to be strong. Who do you think is the strongest one among us? Go ahead; I'm listening."

"You're right."

"Is being strong the most important thing, though?"

"We agreed that it was."

"You announced that it was, more like."

"Oh, do tell me what's more important. Should we call back Steve so that he can run the tear ducts dry? Do we leave Bruce at the control panel?"

"Bruce can hardly stand. Maybe that's indicative of something."

"How important it is to be strong."

"What powers the suit, Anthony?"

"What?"

"You heard her. What powers your suit?"

"I do. I'm anger. I'm an infinite source of power."

"Are we sources of power too, then?"

"You're sources of other things."

"Like what, precisely?"

Steve is just pulling himself up to the window frame when there's an inhuman shriek. Bruce is throwing himself at the control panel and howling, and as Steve watches, Anthony swells even larger before taking over the control panel.

"Bastard wants to fuck with us," he says. He's too angry to disengage his rockets; he hovers over the board and begins to smash relentlessly. On the screen, the man who pulled a knife on Nick in the fistfight blanches and attempts to beat a hasty retreat. Anthony chokes the throttle and Nick's fists flail too fast for Steve to follow. Nick's opponent turns into a bloody pulp in a matter of seconds.

"STOP!" Steve screams, and he leaps through the window. Natasha and Clint step in front of him.

"What do you think you're doing, Steve?"

"We have to stop Nick before he kills him!"

"He was going to kill us first," Natasha says.

"Do you think Greedo put him up to it?" Clint asks.

"It doesn't matter!" Steve shouts. He charges through them--it's easy; they come up to his hip now--and tackles Anthony away from the control panel. 

"Steve," Anthony growls. He's bigger than Steve now, and Steve is exhausted from everything he's done today; Steve knows he doesn't stand a chance in a fight. So he doesn't. He interlocks his arms and legs around Anthony's torso and tucks his chin against the cold, unfeeling metal chest.

"Anthony."

Anthony bats at him, claws at him, and dives into the ground. Steve mashes his face into the armor and refuses to let go as he's rendered breathless again and again.

On the screen, Nick looks out into the screaming crowd, and as Anthony smashes into another wall, Steve's vision whites out before flashing back in, and there, on the screen, is Peggy. She stands open-mouthed on the stairs, eyes sharp and alive and human--

"Peggy," Steve gasps with the little bit of air left in his lungs.

"What was that?" Natasha asks, and Anthony stops slamming into things and goes back to trying to peel Steve off.

"Peggy's in Nick's world," Steve chokes. "Right there, on the stairs."

"How do you know this Peggy?" Clint asks. "Nick doesn't know her."

On the screen, Peggy's mouth snaps closed and she levels an eyebrow at Nick. Anthony manages to get a hand past Steve's shoulder and grabs him by the throat.

"She was in Long Term Memory," Steve gasps. He can feel tears pricking his eyes as Anthony's gauntlet tightens around his throat. He flails for his wrist and just barely manages to activate the magnet.

The shield comes soaring from the floor behind Anthony and smashes into Anthony's forearm. The gauntlet hisses and splinters before falling to the ground and Steve grabs Anthony's hand before he can pull away.

"Do you feel me?" Steve asks urgently even as he collapses to the floor. Anthony stares wide-eyed at their hands.

"Steve?" he says uncertainly. Clint and Natasha scoot closer, and Clint curiously presses a hand against Anthony's uncovered arm.

Natasha jumps in surprise when Bruce grabs her hand and reaches for Steve's other hand. Clint grabs Natasha's free hand. Anthony hisses but doesn't move, and Steve can feel things he's never felt before. 

He feels giddy with happiness and numb with fear and overwhelmed by a towering sense of angry self-righteousness and sick with disgust. Steve realizes that his eyes are shut and peels them open to see Bruce smiling and Clint wrinkling his nose and Natasha scowling and Anthony...

Anthony stares silently back at Steve. Steve realizes that he's not holding Anthony's hand any longer; Anthony's holding his hand.

"We done with girly hour?" Clint asks, and he drops Natasha's hand and moves away from Anthony.

"Yeah," Anthony says. He swallows and pulls Steve towards the control panel. "Fix it."

Steve looks at the unfamiliar control panel. He has no idea what any of the buttons do. He hadn't seen the last few updates and, with Anthony's additions... 

There's one bulbous half orb button near the top of the panel. Steve has to stretch as far as he can to reach it, but it's the only button he's recognizing: the push button from the very first panel.


	6. Peace in Our Time

Nicholas pushed away from Blackbeard and stumbled backwards. He wiped away a warm trickle on his lip and wrinkled his nose when he realized that it was snot. He backed up to the ring and hopped out without looking at the limp body of Blackbeard. Tears stung his eyes and he collapsed next to Matthis, who said nothing but grabbed his knee. 

A few sidehands came on stage to evaluate Blackbeard and Nicholas had a sudden and urgent need to get out.

"I'm getting some air," he said. 

"You want company?" Matthis asked lightly.

Nicholas shook his head and stalked towards the back exit. He leaned on the door to open it and hesitated upon seeing there was already someone out there.

"Nicholas, wasn't it?" the woman asked. 

"Joe," Nicholas said. 

"I wasn't asking for your fight name, or your father's name."

Nicholas glowered and started to move back inside. "I'm not talking to you."

"I suppose Joe doesn't know about this?"

"Joe doesn't know he has kids," Nicholas snapped before he remembered that he wasn't going to talk to the woman.

"We've met before," the woman said. Nicholas stepped through the door.

"You're talking to the wrong guy."

The woman offered him a hand. "Peggy Carter. I stayed with your family last time I was in town. You would have been very young. Perhaps five?"

"You know Joe?"

"We've worked together on occasion."

Nicholas stared at her. "You're with the army."

"Not entirely true."

"What are you doing here?"

"I work for an intelligence agency, and I'm tracking down a black market arms dealer." Peggy's face was absolutely open, and Nicholas didn't doubt her. "It was a good thing you didn't kill that man."

"Yeah. That'd be awkward," Nicholas snorted. 

"You're a good fighter," Peggy said lightly. 

"You gonna tell on me?"

"To Joe?"

Nicholas nodded.

"I thought you might."

"No way in hell." Nicholas slouched against a wall. "So are you going to tell? Why are you out here anyway? I'm not your arms dealer."

"No, you're not," Peggy agreed. "We made substantial eye contact. I had to make sure you wouldn't blow my cover."

"And how do you propose doing that?" Nicholas asked. 

"I thought I'd offer you a job." Peggy's accent dipped into a British one. "Think of this as a trial. You help me nab my guy, and I'll clear the way for you getting a job with the agency."

"I'm not Joe."

"I'd noticed." Peggy heaved a sigh and ran a hand through her hair. "Let me be candid here, Nicholas. I've been working with the agency for twenty some years and I know the demographic. I've never seen a woman clear secretarial duty and every single time a new man joins the ranks, I have to whip him into shape to see me as his superior. We've got all these civil rights movements going on and I'll be damned if the agency is going to sit it out. You're young, Nicholas, but you can carry yourself. You're independent minded. You're a good fighter, which, despite what I might wish, would come in handy for the agency."

"You want a black man."

"Not my biggest qualification," Peggy said. "The only reason I knew of the organization was because I was tenacious and my father was a member. You don't apply for service; you get recruited. I'd like to recruit you." She pauses before adding "It will help ease your passage that you're Joe Fury's son."

"The war hero's black boy, right? Well no; I'm not your black pawn."

"I'm not asking you to be a pawn. I would never ask from you what I would not do myself." Peggy crossed her arms. "I'm asking you to be a teammate."

"Maybe I'm not interested." 

"It'd be rather dull of you," Peggy said agreeably. "Either way, I want you to step down from these fights."

"Lady, I don't even know you."

"You don't remember me," Peggy corrected. "I read you bedtime stories and gave you wrestling tips. I fought your primary school teacher when she thought that you were slow because you were depressed about your father being at war. And I think we both know that, if you hadn't known me, you wouldn't have locked eyes with me."

"You were staring like a crazy lady."

"Everyone was staring," Peggy scoffed. "We didn't know if we were about to witness murder."

"If I had, would you have arrested me?"

"You wouldn't have, if I had anything to say about it," Peggy said. "I was on my way to the stage when you desisted. And you'd best believe that if you had, you wouldn't be getting this offer."

Nicholas kicked at the ground. "Alright, your majesty. What exactly are you wanting from me?"

Peggy beamed.

\--*--

  
Steve's hip buzzes and he grabs at his radio.

"Hello?" 

"You did it, Steve," Peggy says. Her voice sounds wet and Steve automatically gets choked up.

"Everything's okay?" 

"Yes, everything's doing well. The hydra dissolved before our eyes, and we haven't seen trace of any others during our expeditions."

"Peggy?"

"Yes, Steve?"

Steve spins the question in his mind, trying to find a better way to phrase it, but ends up asking bluntly "What are you?"

"I'm the echo of a memory." Peggy sniffs as if Steve had asked a rude question. 

"You're Nicholas' aunt?"

"Joe introduced me as such," Peggy said. "But I wasn't. Am not."

"What happens to echoes?"

"I couldn't tell you, Steve. I haven't met another echo."

"Would you recognize one, do you think?"

"Echos require a strong impression. In my time here, I've not seen a potential source for an echo."

Steve took a deep, hiccuping breath. "Nick's working for you right now."

"I found him?" Peggy asked. 

"Yeah, Peggy. You found him."

"Good," Peggy said. "I thought I might need to, with Joe and all."

"What happens now. Peggy?"

He hears a choked off laugh. "We keep on strong. You in headquarters and I in Long Term Memory."

"I could visit."

"That's not the best idea, Steve."

"You could visit."

"Miss me already, Steve?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Our roles don't overlap any longer."

Steve sits down on the edge of the platform support, his legs hanging down towards the abyss.

"I'm not going to forget you, Peggy."

"Of course not," Peggy said. "But now that Nicholas has the real thing, he might not need the echo."

"Peggy?"

"I'm not the real Peggy Carter. I think you'd do best to focus on that. I'm turning my radio off now, okay?"

"No, Peggy. I don't know what you mean by--"

Steve's radio buzzes and is silent.

"Not thinking about jumping, are you?" Bruce calls through the window. Steve swings his legs.

"Not that it would do anything for me," Steve says. "As far as we can tell, lead emotions are invincible to the effects of the abyss."

"Who's this 'we'?" Bruce sits down just behind the broken window.

"It's a royal we, I guess," Steve shrugs. "Maybe the Howling Commandos."

"The Howling Commandos," Bruce laughs. "Now that goes way back."

"Nicholas, Sawyer, and Dugan: banding together to face all odds," Steve reminisces. "I miss them too."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. It's okay to miss things." 

"It's okay to find new things too," Clint calls as he walks by.

"So many things," Bruce mutters fretfully. He shakes his head before refocusing on Steve. "Good to know the abyss is harmless."

"Not to the people of Long Term Memory," Steve says.

"Oh," Bruce says carefully. "Did you know someone who fell in?"

"No," Steve says. "And even if I did, I wouldn't remember them."

There are a few beats of silence, and then the impact of Steve's words hits him with fresh meaning.

He had been fighting hydra for years, and he couldn't remember a single casualty. The odds are improbable unless they aren't true. 

"What if I did lose someone," Steve says dully.

"You wouldn't remember?" Bruce guesses. "Is this a trick question?"

"I wouldn't remember," Steve repeats. "At all." He sees Bruce shooting him concerned looks but cannot muster the energy to assure him that he's alright.

"I want to honor everyone who fought the hydra," Steve says. "Even if I can't remember."

"How would you do that?" Bruce asks.

"We can have a service."

"It's just that none of us at headquarters know anyone from Long Term Memory."

"And maybe some of them, you won't ever get a chance to meet."

"Stop moping about, Steve," Anthony says. He pokes Bruce's left shoulder as he plops down to his right. His head is barely level with Bruce's shoulder. "You're going to look all wrinkly and old before Nick hits twenty-five."

"He's thinking about people lost to the abyss that he doesn't remember any more because they were lost to the abyss," Bruce says helpfully.

Anthony looks sharply at Steve, who automatically curls his knees up to his chest. Bruce's gaze flicks uncomfortably back and forth between them.

"Could be worse," Anthony says. "You could remember who you lost."

"That would be sad too," Steve agrees. He closes his eyes and presses his palms to his sockets.

"Infuriating," Anthony breathes. "Imagine knowing someone for over a decade and not knowing that they meant anything, and then losing that person, but not being able to do anything about it because you had to be strong--"

Steve uncovers his eyes and cocks his head.

"He's talking about you," says the ever-helpful Bruce.

"You missed me?" Steve says incredulously. "You? That's unlikely."

"Of course I didn't miss you." Anthony tosses his head imperiously. "I just didn't know we needed you." Anthony huffs and puffs for a moment before asking "And you? Did you miss us?"

"I did." Steve hugs his knees. "A first, at least. I mostly hated myself." 

"I hated you too," Anthony smirks. "And I'm pretty sure at one point Nick hated you too."

Bruce's lip quivers, and Steve continues as if Anthony hadn't spoken. "But I didn't want everything to be about me. It had to be about Nick."

"You're good at that," Anthony says.

"What?"

"Putting Nick first. You're good at knowing what he needs."

"Not really--"

"Jesus Christ, take a damn compliment!"

Steve doesn't smile, but it's a near thing. He can't stop his nose from crinkling up. Anthony moseys to his feet and leans through the window.

"Come on, Cap," he says lightly, and he extends his bare hand to Steve. "Let's get back to Nick." 

Steve grabs his hand and draws himself to his feet. He can feel the anger humming like a live wire, ready to be tapped, but in the last few days, Anthony hasn't monopolized the control panel once. Anthony's more devious, more cunning, angry as ever, but also in total control of himself in ways that Steve wouldn't have before thought possible.

Bruce grabs Steve's other hand as soon as Steve hops through the window and Steve can feel the rapid pulse of terror diverted and simplified and smoothed by a steady, intentional beat. He realizes, belatedly, that Bruce is very uncomfortable with his being outside of the window. 

"Group hug time!" Clint cheers and takes a running jump to monkey onto Steve's back. Steve stumbles a little, but Bruce and Anthony stabilize him.

"Is this going to be an ongoing occurrence?" Natasha bemoans, but she nonetheless plasters herself to Steve's front and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Yes," Clint says seriously. "At least one group hug per day."

"That sounds nice," Bruce says.

Natasha rolls her eyes. "Boys," she adds disparagingly. 

"Taking too long," Anthony snorts. He squeezes Steve's hand before dropping it and stepping up to the control panel. Bruce holds his breath as Anthony leans over the controls, but then Anthony straightens back up and steps to the side. Steve and Bruce flank him; Natasha stands on Steve's other side and Clint is at her elbow.

"It looks pretty complicated," Steve says. The updated control panel incorporates parts from Anthony's frankensteinian creation, missed updates, and the on-track models.

"Probably inefficient," Natasha agrees. "So unnecessary, but apparently Nick has to catch up on some panel buttons that he missed getting installed."

"Hey!" Anthony grouches. "He had plenty of great buttons that other kids didn't have."

"Probably for the best," Bruce says, and Anthony bops him on the head. 

"I thought you made fantastic controls!"

"Stop being a suck-up, Clint."

"Focus, team, focus," Steve says as Nick climbs out of the taxi, straightens his pants, smoothes his button down, and marches into SHIELD headquarters.

"Ay ay, Captain," they cheer.

Steve nods to Anthony, who gleefully fiddles with the control panel. 

\--*--

  
Nick gave the receptionist his most bad-ass motherfucker scowl. She beamed back at him, unpeturbed, and picked up her phone.

“Director Carter, your recruit has arrived...Yes….Absolutely…..Yes, Director.” The receptionist dropped the phone back in its cradle without breaking eye contact with Nick.

She winked. “Welcome to Shield, Mr. Fury.”


End file.
